Collar counties will fight transit tax hike, Metra chief says

Outlying areas feel they fund city and Cook, Ladd contends

April 17, 2005|By Virginia Groark, Tribune staff reporter.

Any attempt to increase the collar counties' sales tax contribution for mass transit will be met with stiff opposition, because those suburban communities do not receive the same level of public transportation as Cook County and Chicago, Metra's chairman said Friday.

Speaking after the agency's board meeting, Metra Chairman Jeffrey Ladd also criticized a recent legislative committee report on the region's transportation funding formula, saying it included inaccurate information. Though the study found that Cook County suburbs are subsidizing service in Chicago and the collar counties, Metra believes the collar counties and suburban Cook are subsidizing service in Chicago.

The committee released its report the same day the Chicago Transit Authority Board approved drastic service cuts to take effect in July unless the agency gets an infusion of cash from the state legislature.

Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), who hopes to tap federal and state dollars for paratransit to prevent CTA service cuts, believes the committee's report shows the formula must be updated. She hopes to build a regional consensus in the next 18 months and said all funding sources will be considered.

Chicago and suburban Cook County contribute the equivalent of 1 percent of their sales tax revenues to mass transit, and the collar counties contribute 0.25 percent.

Ladd said the collar counties don't have the same amount of service as Chicago or suburban Cook communities like Evanston, where people have ample opportunities toride the CTA, Pace or Metra. In collar county suburbs, buses are few and far between, and people often have to drive miles to a Metra station, he said.

Though the report notes that finding new revenue sources would provide operating dollars for CTA's proposed Circle Line and Metra's proposed suburb-to-suburb STAR Line, Ladd said it probably will be 10 years before the STAR Line is operational. "That's asking people to put a lot of money in a piggy bank," he said.

Hamos, however, said the money could initially help match federal dollars to build such projects and later be used to operate them.

"I can't imagine why Jeff Ladd is putting a negative cast on this," she said Friday. "He should be out there working with us and being part of the team to remind the collar counties as well as other parts of the region that we do need to come up with a funding source for transit."

In other business, Metra's board will not vote until its May meeting on a plan to allow bicycles on its trains during weekends and off-peak weekday hours.